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mHealth initiatives can help reduce deaths from HIV/AIDS, says the report

mHealth 'could save a million African lives by 2017'

Maina Waruru

10/04/13

[NAIROBI] Mobile health (mHealth) applications such as text messages could save more than a million lives in Sub-Saharan Africa over the next five years, according to a report.

The report, produced by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) India, says that mobile phone interventions to ensure patients comply with treatment, medical stock is available and healthcare workers stick to treatment guidelines could save some of the three million lives lost each year across Africa to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), malaria and pregnancy-related conditions.

"Many of the deadly conditions are relatively simple to treat, prevent or contain. SMS reminders to check stock levels at health centres have shown promising results in reducing stock-outs of key combination therapy medication for malaria, TB and HIV," it says.

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"Delivering mobile-assisted awareness to pregnant mothers and traditional birth attendants could reduce prenatal and maternal mortality by up to 30 per cent, while programmes that track mobile-usage patterns have been very successful in predicting disease outbreaks and in reporting malaria reporting adherence," according to the report.

Africa's low adoption of mHealth solutions is mainly due to a lack of health literacy among patients, says Shashank Tripathi, leader of the strategy and research practice at PwC India and one of the study authors.

"We believe that, whereas the cost [of mobile phones] may be an issue affecting uptake [of mHealth], a bigger issue is awareness. People who are unaware of the need to consult a health service will not consult it," Tripathi tells SciDev.Net. Consequently, he recommends intensified awareness campaigns.

"There has been a consistent gap in terms of evidence linking mHealth to improved health and operational benefits, and this is particularly true when it comes to studies in low- and middle-income countries," Mechael says.

The report was launched at the annual Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year (25-28 February).